Sunday, November 04, 2012

Fame is fleeting... and Blogger is slow!

Maybe you've been wondering where I've been?

Well, a few months ago, an automated message told me that neither Firefox nor Safari web browsers would be supported by the latest upgrades to Blogger and that, if I wanted to be able to keep posting efficiently, I needed to switch to, or at least install, Google Chrome. Then Google Chrome strongly suggested that I make Google Chrome my default browser. Mmmmmm.

Problem is, I really, really like Firefox - and my first attempts to upload (or link) to things like slideshows made with Flash suddenly weren't being supported by Google Chrome. Mmmmmm.

And everything seems to be running sooooo slow. Aaaarrrrrgggghhhh!!!!

These days I do spend quite a bit of time over on on Facebook and, when a FB thread would become noteworthy, I was often turning that into a more polished blog entry, but these recent changes to Blogger - and the agonising slowness of Blogger to load (especially when keyword searching for a previous blog entry in my History) - has stripped out all the spontaneity. If I can't find an efficient way to auto-synchronise Blogger, Twitter and Facebook, without my entries looking like bizarre cut-and-paste jobs filled with bad formatting and "@" symbols all over the place - I'm afraid time just runs out for well-considered, longer, funnier, blog posts. The art of commenting on blog posts also seems to have dried up in recent years. Again, the same anecdote or pic on Facebook will garner many more responses, even though my potential audience there is much smaller.

Anyway, braving the current mire that is Blogger and Google Chrome, I shall persist, and, if it works, I might try to find time to retro-add some old blog entries that have been stockpiling in my memory.

A friend emailed me this morning to ask, "Did you read about yourself in 'Good Weekend' this weekend? I think you were the man in the leopard skin suit (jacket) in the story on Selwa Anthony."

OMG? The leopardskin print shirt I wore at last September's Sassy Awards? Off to the newsagents I went! Joe Bananas (of QVB) did say, when I bought the shirt on his strong recommendation, that it was a shirt that no one would forget. It kinda rubs it in, when I'm so far behind on blog entries. That shirt is old news now.

Okay, I'm back from the newsagent! He gave me the supplement for free because it was yesterday's news! Page 9, "Never-Ending Story"; Tim Elliott's article on Selwa in the "Sydney Morning Herald" magazine supplement. I guess I'm the guy in the "full leopard skin suit" who "nods hungrily" at Selwa's suggestion that we be "ready to dance". Never let the truth get in the way of a good anecdote. (Mr Elliott is in good company here!) Ha ha!

It's not my first time being featured in leopard skin, either, thanks in the first instance to Geoffrey McSkimming when he put me in a "School Magazine" play!

Above: Thanks to writer, Geoffrey McSkimming, and artist, Tohby Riddle, I once featured in a "School Magazine" play ("Touchdown", Vol 87, No 10, Nov 2002, pp 341-346). The character of "Ian, the lost librarian", a Tarzan memorabilia fanatic (instead of "Star Trek"), appears in "Mr A at the Floor of Heaven, or, Not Quite Yeti".

"The misguided librarians are lost in the snow,
Dewey's their system, but snowy they go..."

Ian the librarian wears a spotted loincloth over his snow-pants, of course. He is one of those tiny silhouettes in Tohby's artwork, and was joined by my real life workmates at SCIS & "Scan": Anne (aka "Mrs Dowling"), Wendy and Deirdre.

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About me

Otherwise known as "Therin of Andor", Ian McLean has had an active association with "Star Trek" and science fiction media fandom in Australia since 1980. Before then he was an avid fan of the "Batman" TV series (60s) and the Australian TV classic, "Number 96" (70s).